Hiding From Daisy
by Dukes126plus
Summary: Luke’s got a hold on Bo’s wrist, which is surprising, considering he was half an old barn away just a second ago. From The Runaway.


Heh heh, this one turned out to be something of a naughty-naughty. From _The Runaway_.

* * *

They wind up in the remnants of the old barn, off the old carriage ruts. It's amazing that the thing's still upright at all, what with the fact that no one's seen fit to shore it up probably since Jesse was a young man. Luke gives its sagging roof a long, soulful look, but there's no repairing it, not when the walls won't support a man trying to climb up there.

Bo pokes around the corners at things long broken and forgotten about. A rough hewn handle, about four feet long and separated from whatever tool it once helped to wield, something rusted beyond recognition, rotted bits of cloth. Proof, maybe, that he had a father once, someone who stored tools here, somewhere in his short life between being a brother to Jesse and a husband to Bo's mother.

"She get you?" Luke's hovering in his usual modus operandi. _Did someone hurt you? Because if they did they're gonna learn a new definition of pain._ Even if it's just Daisy and her frying pan, driving them to take refuge at the far ends of their own property.

"Nah." It's a kind of honesty. The girl was aiming for their heads, looking to flatten them like in those old cartoon movies they used to watch, back when the Hazzard Theater played double features. That she managed to clip Bo's hip is nothing he wants to confess to. Even if it is sore and it's taking everything in his power not to rub it like a little boy that's just been spanked. "You?"

Luke stops just this side of laughing at such a fool notion. Of course his skinny little female cousin didn't even get close, especially not with the way Luke stuck Bo in the middle like a buffer.

"Let me see," Luke's saying, closing that already tiny distance between them, crowding him into a corner.

"I said she didn't," Bo reminded him; funny how Luke's skeptical face, highlighted by sideways light through gaping holes in the wall, doubts Bo's every word.

"Bo," and he's sick of Luke using his own name against him like this, calling him stupid in just that single syllable. "Hold still." Funny, Luke's not after his backside, more like his face, squinting at something that's not really there. Bo's back hits the barely standing wall as Luke's fingers catch hold of his chin, turning it to the side. "What's this?"

This is his cousin running a finger down from just under his ear and approximately the perimeter of his jaw line, leaving a burning sensation behind. "Luke!" he complains, pulling back and smacking his head against the old stud behind it. "What is it?" his hand, which is on its way up to figure out what his cousin's done to him, gets slapped back down.

"Your hands are dirty, Bo," he gets chastised, like that wasn't just filth that Luke just left on his face.

"What," did you just do to me? No, that's not right, more like, "What is it?"

"Just a scratch," Luke tells him, but for all that it's something so small as a scratch, his cousin seems to be looking at it pretty hard. "Don't go getting it infected. Where'd you get it?"

Bo shrugs, with _just a scratch_ going through his head, trying to out-shout the complaints about how _that hurts_, now that Luke's made him aware of it. "Maybe on the Kissing Cliff." Where they bailed out of Daisy's car as it hurtled along toward its own spectacular demise.

"You hurt anything else?" Luke's turning his face from side to side with one hand, while the other leaves bruises on his extremities in the path of its search for broken bones.

"Settle down, Luke." It's an attempt at self-preservation. "Ain't nothing else. I didn't even know I had that," _just a scratch, don't touch it with your dirty hands_, "until just now. How bad is it?"

It's enough to make Luke smirk and stop manhandling him. "Oh, you'll likely live," is the answer he gets. "Gonna leave a heckuva a scar, though." Very serious nod after that one.

And some things just aren't funny. "Luke!" Damn if this old place lacks even single reflective surface. Shoving himself free of Luke's hands, Bo starts checking the junk that lines the walls for the shard of an old mirror. _Just a scratch_.

"It's okay," Luke informs him. "It'll make you look rugged. Like John Wayne."

John Wayne is a lot of things, but he's no one Bo wants to look like. Hard and wrinkled, like he spent too much time in the western sun, lumpy and lined and, "He's dead, Luke." Nobody Bo wants to think about resembling.

His hand's feeling at his face before he can remind himself about _just a scratch_ and _don't get dirt in it_. Luke's got a hold on Bo's wrist, which is surprising, considering he was half an old barn away just a second ago.

"Don't go getting it infected," is the reminder. "Or you really might end up with a scar." See now, if Luke had been that honest in the first place…

"I thought you said I'd look good if it scarred," Bo challenges. "And now you don't want it to. Admit it Luke, I'm pretty."

Snort. "I'm sure you don't need me to tell you nothing," Luke answers, letting go of his hand and walking away with his head tipped down and shaking. Looks back over his own shoulder. "You already got a swelled enough head."

He's not getting away that easily. If there's anyone who knows how to chase someone down, it's Bo. Who moves fast enough to catch Luke's hand and spin him as sharp as Rosco's patrol car when it's been flipped onto its roof. "You think I'm pretty," Bo repeats, nice and slow so Luke can learn it. "Say it." He's backing his cousin toward a wall.

Luke nods, terribly obediently. "You think I'm pretty," he repeats, backing up smooth as wheels on blacktop, like he knows without looking exactly where all the remnants of a past life are, exactly what in this old barn would like to trip him. Luke's got eyes in the back of his head and a quick wit. All Bo's got to combat that with is his scratched face.

"No," he says, "I don't." Luke's not pretty, and that nasty old scar on his chin's got nothing to do with it. "But you think I am." For all those eyes in the back of Luke's head, he's up against a wall now, pressed there by Bo's chest. "Admit it." Luke lets his hands be caught; there's no other explanation for how Bo comes to pin them against the wall, just above his shoulders. "Come on," Bo encourages, nose to nose with Luke now, and no longer sure if he's asking for words or permission.

He gets neither, gets Luke making the first move, leading the way like he always has. A jumpstart of a kiss, quick and testing, inciting immediate response. Bo's mouth over Luke's, wide and inviting, his hands getting shoved at and body getting rocked against. Like an echo, he rocks back in delayed time, only to get shoved at again.

He reckons it's too late for Luke to be pointing out stop signs now, so he uses his leverage to pin Luke to the wall. One way, cuz. Except Luke's got a hand free faster than Bo can figure out why it's fidgeting under his. Big old ape paw of a hand slaps on Bo's shoulder, pushing him back, all of Luke's body following, steering, spinning a quick one-eighty until it's Bo's back against the wall, and Luke doing the driving. Slower, steadier, a gentler hand, like his cousin's always had.

_Like this_, Luke's showing him. _Let the clutch out slow, don't give it too much gas. Take it just the right speed and won't neither of us have to slam on the brakes_. And that's fine, Bo'll ride shotgun like this for now. But eventually they'll come to a creek bed, and when that happens Luke had better just brace himself for the jump.


End file.
